Two days ago, the As­sis­tant Au­di­tor Gen­er­al, Shi­va Sinanan, told Par­lia­ment’s Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee that there are 80 va­can­cies for au­di­tors in his de­part­ment.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al has the im­por­tant role of mon­i­tor­ing whether our tax dol­lars have been used ide­al­ly and for the pur­pose in­tend­ed.

In Kim Jeppe­sen’s pub­li­ca­tion, The Role of Au­dit­ing in the Fight Against Cor­rup­tion, the au­thor writes, “The de­tec­tion of cor­rup­tion by au­di­tors is im­por­tant be­cause the per­ceived risk of get­ting caught is an im­por­tant fac­tor in de­ter­ring peo­ple from en­gag­ing in fraud­u­lent be­hav­iour, such as cor­rup­tion.

“This is par­tic­u­lar­ly the case for elect­ed politi­cians, for whom the risk of de­tec­tion com­bined with re-elec­tion in­cen­tives re­duces cor­rup­tion…au­dit­ing is con­sid­ered one of the eight pil­lars of a na­tion­al in­tegri­ty sys­tem, which can pro­tect against cor­rup­tion.”

T&T’s cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion in­dex score was 42 points in 2022, mak­ing us the third most cor­rupt coun­try in the Caribbean.

Haiti and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic had low­er scores. Bar­ba­dos scored the high­est (64), fol­lowed by St Vin­cent and the Grenadines (59), St Lu­cia (56) and Do­mini­ca (55).

Hence, we have every rea­son to in­crease the fight against cor­rup­tion, and starv­ing the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al of staff is not the way to go.

Since Oc­to­ber 17, 2018, we were promised bet­ter. Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the Op­po­si­tion dur­ing Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said that 50 of the 100 va­can­cies in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice would be filled in the next fi­nan­cial year.

Now, five years lat­er, we are still short.

It’s not just the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al‘s de­part­ment which seems side­lined.

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion’s 2022 an­nu­al re­port states: “The dras­tic de­ple­tion of the bud­get can be ob­served by com­par­ing $26 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed to the com­mis­sion in 2015 with the fig­ure of $8.6 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed in 2023.

“At present, there are sev­er­al open po­si­tions in the com­mis­sion which can­not be filled due to lack of fund­ing. This has se­vere­ly af­fect­ed the progress of the In­ves­ti­ga­tions Unit in par­tic­u­lar. The unit has a to­tal of 44 ac­tive in­ves­ti­ga­tions dat­ing back to 2013 and has on­ly closed ten as of De­cem­ber 2022, as more hu­man re­sources is need­ed to bring clo­sure to mat­ters at hand.

“The com­mis­sion has been pro­vid­ed with a re­strict­ed bud­get that can­not car­ry the com­mis­sion to meet its staffing ex­pens­es for the year 2023 and be­yond.”

The re­port quot­ed the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al, who said, “The com­mis­sion shall be pro­vid­ed with ad­e­quate staff for the prompt and ef­fi­cient dis­charge of its func­tions un­der the act.”

Ken­neth Mo­hammed‘s ar­ti­cle, Trou­ble in Par­adise: Cor­rup­tion in the Caribbean has be­come nor­malised, which was pub­lished in The Guardian’s March 4, is­sue reads: “The Caribbean is home to some of the wealth­i­est politi­cians in the world – yet, the ever-pop­u­lar posts on so­cial me­dia about the rich­est or best-paid in the re­gion tend to ig­nore most of the mil­lion­aire and bil­lion­aire politi­cians of Trinidad and To­ba­go and oth­er is­lands.

“It is in­ter­est­ing to see the net worth of these politi­cians, and shock­ing that some were of av­er­age wealth, on­ly be­com­ing mil­lion­aires or bil­lion­aires since tak­ing of­fice. Mean­while, the cit­i­zens who vot­ed them in­to pow­er have be­come poor­er, more dis­em­pow­ered, and more dis­fran­chised.

“How did these politi­cians get so wealthy? I be­lieve some have done it le­git­i­mate­ly, as pro­fes­sion­als in oth­er fields. Oth­ers have prof­it­ed as politi­cians, us­ing in­sid­er in­for­ma­tion and re­ceiv­ing con­tracts through prox­ies, such as wives, friends, and col­leagues, and some through kick­backs and bribes … Cor­rup­tion in the Caribbean has shown no im­prove­ment over the last decade as we seem to be con­tent to have set up shop at the bot­tom of the CPI.”

Even the ser­vice com­mis­sions are af­fect­ed.

These were cre­at­ed to shield the pub­lic ser­vant from po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, in­su­late var­i­ous in­sti­tu­tions from po­lit­i­cal con­trol and act as a check against cor­rup­tion.

From 2014 to the present, the ser­vice com­mis­sions have con­tin­u­ous­ly had their sub­ven­tions from the Gov­ern­ment re­duced.

In 2014, they were giv­en a to­tal of $104 mil­lion to ser­vice all five com­mis­sions. In 2022, the bud­get­ed fig­ure was ap­prox­i­mate­ly $72 mil­lion—a re­duc­tion of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 31 per cent.

We keep hear­ing politi­cians say that these com­mis­sions are in­ef­fi­cient and have out­lived their use­ful­ness, but with their dwin­dling bud­gets, in­creas­ing work­load, part-time com­mis­sion­ers, and de­layed in­for­ma­tion from the DPA, how are they to suc­ceed?

The UN’s es­ti­mate of five per cent of a coun­try’s GDP be­ing lost to cor­rup­tion, means our earn­ings of US$500 bil­lion from 1962-2019 sug­gest US$25 bil­lion ben­e­fit­ed the cor­rupt.

Fran­cois de La Rochefou­cauld wrote: “We should not trust democ­ra­cy with­out ex­treme­ly pow­er­ful sys­tems of ac­count­abil­i­ty.”

By starv­ing these in­sti­tu­tions of funds and staff, it ap­pears we are on the path­way of de­fund­ing democ­ra­cy.